I feel like the biggest obstacle with regards to rational discourse in the sphere of audiophilia is that many people just flat refuse to accept the existence of perceptual bias. It's been demonstrated to exist in lots of places and many different fields over and over again. Yet, people refuse to believe it is a thing.
It's strange though, it is not like people reject all scientific concepts—even if it does contract their "gut" feeling or impression. For instance, I don't think too many people would reject the notion that stuff is made up of tiny bits of stuff called "atoms" that are too small to see. No one will attack you for claiming that water isn't actually a basic substance on its own, but rather it composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Nobody gets death threats for saying that sunlight, heat, radio waves are actually all the same thing (even though intuitively they seem pretty different).
I'm not a scientist or anything so maybe my examples totally suck. Feel free to add in your own. The point is people don't seem to form their beliefs in a consistent and rational pattern (quelle surprise!). For some reason people get really cranky when you try to tell them that what they are hearing may just be the result of some kind bias. Yet, for some reason they have no problem accepting other facts which cannot be readily verified by simple observation.
Things would be easier if people would just accept that human perception isn't infallible. It's not that big a deal. It doesn't mean we can't have any subjective impressions (people post subjective impressions of stuff here all the time—including myself), nor does it mean that all subjective observations are automatically worthless (which seems to be what some people claim anyone who takes some measurements is advocating for).
It's strange though, it is not like people reject all scientific concepts—even if it does contract their "gut" feeling or impression. For instance, I don't think too many people would reject the notion that stuff is made up of tiny bits of stuff called "atoms" that are too small to see. No one will attack you for claiming that water isn't actually a basic substance on its own, but rather it composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Nobody gets death threats for saying that sunlight, heat, radio waves are actually all the same thing (even though intuitively they seem pretty different).
I'm not a scientist or anything so maybe my examples totally suck. Feel free to add in your own. The point is people don't seem to form their beliefs in a consistent and rational pattern (quelle surprise!). For some reason people get really cranky when you try to tell them that what they are hearing may just be the result of some kind bias. Yet, for some reason they have no problem accepting other facts which cannot be readily verified by simple observation.
Things would be easier if people would just accept that human perception isn't infallible. It's not that big a deal. It doesn't mean we can't have any subjective impressions (people post subjective impressions of stuff here all the time—including myself), nor does it mean that all subjective observations are automatically worthless (which seems to be what some people claim anyone who takes some measurements is advocating for).